Politics Under Conditions of War: the Effect of the War Measures Acts on Political Struggles Within the South African Mine Workers’ Union, 1939-1947 Wessel Visser 

209 Scientia Militaria vol 44, no 1, 2016, pp 209-223. doi:10.5787/44-1-1168 Politics Under Conditions of War: the effect of the War Measures Acts on Political Struggles within the South African Mine Workers’ Union, 1939-1947 Wessel Visser Abstract The South African Mine Workers’ Union, or MWU, was one of the most prominent white trade unions of 20th-century South Africa and active in one of the country’s key industries, namely gold mining. In the aftermath of the violent 1922 strike, the union’s executive was bureaucratised, which left the MWU vulnerable to corruption and maladministration. This gave rise to a protracted struggle for control of the union’s executive. In the 1930s and 1940s the strife within MWU ranks became entangled with the national struggle for political hegemony between the National Party and the United Party, as well as Afrikaner nationalism. At the outbreak of World War II the Smuts cabinet armed the state under War Measures’ Acts, which entitled it to a range of arbitrary powers, including powers to control strategic minerals, such as gold, and to curb industrial unrest. Naturally, the War Measures’ Acts had a significant effect on the doings of the MWU – in particular the struggle for political control of its executive. The struggle involved three official commissions of inquiry into the affairs of the MWU, two mining strikes and numerous court actions between the two competing factions within its ranks. As a result of the stipulations of the War Measures’ Acts pertaining to the mining industry, as well as those of the MWU constitution, a political impasse to solve the issue of democratic elections in the union arose. Therefore the War Measures’ Acts still had legal repercussions for the union three years after the cessation of hostilities. As such, the War Measures’ Acts1 influenced politics and elections in the MWU as late as 1948. Keywords: South Africa, Second World War, labour movements 1. Introduction According to the famous French Annales School historian, Fernand Braudel, as quoted by JM Winter, war cannot be understood if abstracted from non-military developments, which both affect it and are affected by it.2 Albert Grundlingh also argues that scholars in the field of war and society seek to place warfare in its total historical milieu. They share a common interest in war as an agent of social change and in the socio-political repercussions of military service3, therefore also focusing on aspects of warfare beyond the actual theatres of war. Already in the 20th century historians in Britain began to investigate themes such as the economic, social, and administrative problems of a nation at war, the effect of economic and social change on the waging of war and its destructiveness, problems to produce and supply men, munitions and goods essential to the war effort, sources of war taxation, etc.4 Department of History, University of Stellenbosch. I am indebted to my colleagues, Bill Nasson and Albert Grundlingh, for providing valuable perspectives and sources on war and society. Research for this article was made possible by funding from the National Research Foundation. 210 In 1978, Mark Stein published an essay in South Africa on Max Gordon, who became the secretary of the African Laundry Workers Union in Johannesburg. Stein explains how the emergency regulations of the War Measures’ Acts promulgated by the South African government after the outbreak of World War II, curtailed trade union activities. Gordon, a communist, was suspected of subversive activities and was interned from 1940 to 1941.5 Recently, post-graduate studies at South African universities also began to focus on war-related issues, which profoundly affected civilian populations of societies at war. For instance, Yolandi Albertyn investigated the availability of foodstuffs on domestic markets and food control in South Africa during World War II.6 The study on which this article is based, investigated the influence of the War Measures’ Acts during World War II in the gold mining industry, and how these measures affected labour politics in the war years and in the years immediately after the war, particularly in the South African Mine Workers’ Union. 2. The Mine Workers’ Union in historical context Originally founded on 22 June 1902 in Johannesburg as the Transvaal Miners’ Association, or TMA, this union became prominent for its militant stance in the great industrial strikes during the first two decades of the existence of the Union of South Africa. After the 1913 strike, the TMA was renamed the (South African) Mine Workers’ Union or MWU.7 The year 1922 saw the biggest and bloodiest industrial upheaval in South African labour history. It entailed a violent three-month strike, which was eventually suppressed by government forces.8 In order to prevent similar violent clashes between labour, capital and the state in future, the government implemented the Industrial Conciliation Act of 1924. On the one hand, this Act gave unionised white workers a secure position against undercutting in industry from any quarter, while on the other hand,it also helped mine management by the obstacles it placed in the way of precipitating strike action. With this Act, as well as by the introduction of the Mines and Works Amendment (or ‘Colour Bar’) Act of 1926, government was able to wean white labour away from militant industrial action by promoting a policy of job reservation in skilled trades and simultaneously to appease possible resentment of the skilled white miner about cheap unskilled black labour.9 Davies and Yudelman argue that labour legislation in the post-1922 period effectively led to the incorporation, institutionalisation and bureaucratisation of white unions within state structures. Organised white labour lost its power to use strikes as an effective political and economic weapon, and accepted collective bargaining and civilised labour policy in exchange for compliance with state-controlled labour structures. Thus, the MWU was to become a docile, pro-government union. Within union structures, power passed into the hands of a bureaucracy of permanent and salaried trade union officials. Concomitantly, the rank and file membership became increasingly alienated from union leaders and apathetic towards unions in general.10 After the 1922 strike, the leadership of the MWU went into the hands of an executive which, through financial maladministration, neglected the interests of the mine workers who were not always familiar with the true nature, objectives and functioning of trade unionism.11 Many historians regard the 1930s and 1940s as the years when Afrikaner nationalism peaked. In this period, the MWU became embroiled in the intense and sometimes fierce struggle for political hegemony between DF Malan’s National Party (NP) and Gen. Jan Smuts’s newly founded United Party (UP). For Afrikaner political and cultural leaders within the NP, as well as the UP with its ally, the South 211 African Labour Party (SALP), the densely populated mining constituencies of the Witwatersrand became crucial political battlegrounds in general elections.12 Already World War I saw a continuation of the increasing Afrikanerisation of the white labour contingent on the Witwatersrand gold mines. At the outbreak of the war in 1914 thousands of loyal English-speaking miners volunteered for the British war effort, thus creating a shortage of white miners. Many Afrikaners who did not share these pro-war sentiments took their places on the mines. By 1916, they comprised the majority of white miners when the ratio of Afrikaner to immigrant workers on the mines was 75% to 25%.13 These figures reflect the gradual transformation of the white working class on the mines into one that consisted predominantly of Afrikaners.14 By 1936, for instance, Afrikaners constituted 90% of the MWU’s 12 000 members, but they had virtually no representation on the union’s executive and therefore no say in running its affairs. Consequently, therefore, with the battle for political power in the public domain, a bitter and protracted struggle was waged for twelve years between Afrikaner Nationalists in the NP and their foes in the UP - SALP alliance for political control of the MWU.15 In October 1936, young middle-class Afrikaner intellectuals under the leadership of Dr. Albert Hertzog, son of the founder of the NP, Gen. JBM Hertzog, established the Nasionale Raad van Trustees, or NRT.16 The main objective of the NRT was to organise the Afrikaner working class under the wing of a broader Afrikanerdom. Consequently, the Afrikanerbond van Mynwerkers, or ABM, was established in November 1936 as a counter-union to the MWU.17 For Afrikaner culture brokers, Afrikaner miners had to be weaned from possible susceptibility to “alien influences” in institutions such as the MWU and the SALP, which were dominated by English speakers.18 There were also union-related motives behind the formation of the ABM. Miners held many grievances and reputed grievances regarding the general working conditions on the mines. As the only officially recognised union, the MWU was the sole conduit through which such grievances could be aired. However, the union was weak and inefficient, and in the eyes of the workers, it made no concrete efforts to improve their working conditions and further their interests. The general feeling was that the MWU executive collaborated with the Chamber of Mines, which represented the interests of the mining houses, to keep the economic standard of the miners at a low level. The Chamber’s practice, supported by the MWU, of actively recruiting skilled labour abroad rather than employing Afrikaners, was regarded as a gross form of economic repression. Profitable and less dangerous work was allegedly reserved for non-Afrikaners. Virtually all less profitable underground work was done by Afrikaner miners, who lived in extreme poverty.

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